Feed the children

FOR a nation that prides itself on being the Giant of Africa, Nigeria far too often reveals that it is a dwarf. The latest manifestation of this paradox is showing in the incredibly high rates of malnourished children located within its borders.

The numbers are staggering. The prevalence of stunting among Nigerian children in 2003 was 42 per cent, while the prevalence of wasting was 11 per cent. In 2016, stunting was 44 per cent, while wasting remained at 11 per cent. In 2017, stunting was 43.6 per cent and wasting was 10.8 per cent. In the 2016/2017 survey, Lagos topped the wasting league with 11 per cent, while Kano came tops in stunting with 58 per cent.

Some six million children in the country suffer from stunting; at 37 per cent of the total, this far exceeds Rwanda’s 20 per cent; 29 per cent of the country’s children are underweight, compared to Rwanda’s 2.5 per cent, and the global average of 15 per cent.

Wasting results from acute malnutrition, while stunting is the consequence of chronic malnutrition. The World Health Organization (WHO) regards any prevalence of wasting above 10 per cent and stunting in excess of 40 per cent as critical. In 2013, Nigeria ranked third in terms of global child malnutrition.

Malnutrition essentially imposes physical and mental limitations on growing children, and thereby negatively affects their capacity to become effective contributors to national development. Nigeria finds itself in this utterly unacceptable situation due to a toxic mix of neglect, institutional failure, and public indifference.

The country’s low exclusive breastfeeding rates deprive babies of the vital micronutrients they require in the first few months of life. In the 2016/2017 survey period, it was 17 per cent, in comparison with that of neighbouring Ghana, where it was 52 per cent. To worsen matters, half of Nigeria’s women of reproductive age were anaemic as at July 2016.

The Boko Haram insurgency, herdsmen-farmers’ clashes and other intercommunal conflicts have resulted in over three million Nigerians without access to adequate food, water and health services, and urgently requiring humanitarian assistance. The displacement caused by such widespread unrest has hampered access to farms, thereby impinging negatively on the ability of many communities to feed themselves.

The failure of successive governments to treat this crisis with the urgency that it so desperately deserves has served to further worsen the problem. This must change. An emergency must be declared in the child nutrition sub-sector and immediate steps taken to ensure that all children are guaranteed access to nutritious food in infancy, and in primary and secondary schools.

Governments and other stakeholders must come together to clearly outline roles and responsibilities to be taken up in speedily resolving this crisis. Federal and state governments must give agricultural investment special priority, with definitive timelines and deadlines for increased crop production, better storage and improved marketing. The school feeding programme must be ramped up significantly with the aim of achieving increased nutritional value and better coverage rates.

Non-governmental and multilateral agencies like the WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and their local counterparts must be brought more completely into the resolution of the malnutrition crisis, and tools like the National Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) should be applied with greater comprehensiveness and frequency.

The country’s media must ensure that the urgency of the situation is drummed into every citizen. It is incredible that Nigerians can engage in meaningless frivolities in the face of a crisis that claims the lives of up to 500,000 children every year, which is far worse than can be found in nations that are actually at war.

It is time that Nigeria began to live up to its obligations to the most vulnerable of its citizens. A nation that cannot ensure that its own children are healthy and properly fed is unworthy of its sovereignty.